


Supernova

by Rinielle



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Doctor Who/Les Miserables crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinielle/pseuds/Rinielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has lost so many by now, that he can always recognise the signs.</p>
<p>"Those are the days I wish I’d never met you; that you had never spotted the TARDIS, that I had chosen another place to leave her, or that I had never returned. Every time you throw yourself into danger in the name of liberty and freedom and justice; you shine a little brighter. Days like today. The days you burn so bright it hurts my heart to witness, because I have seen a thousand stars - a hundred thousand - and I have seen them blaze their brightest right before they fall."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Supernova

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Doctor Who AU verse I created with (rinielle.tumblr.com/tagged/Doctor_Who_AU) these drabbles.  
> This was only meant to be like 300 words and then it got away from me... so is the story of my writing life.

“Where are we going now?”

The silence until then had been almost tangible, crawling across his skin, wrapping around his throat, stifling him. He doesn’t look up, can’t look up; if he looks up he’ll change his mind. If he looks up he’ll not look away and off they’ll go again; this time perhaps they won’t get so lucky.  
“Paris, June 7th 2013,” he says simply, pressing buttons and flipping switches, complex patterns that seem random but which spell out their journey back. “The day after we left,”

“What for?” So demanding, always so demanding; always wanting answers, even the ones he won’t want to hear.  
“I’m taking you home,” he replies, pulling the final lever and sending himself flying back into his usual armchair. He stays there for the duration, and barely notices that Enjolras has moved until he has his hands braced on each arm of the chair and is leaning over him; trying to force him to look at him. He stares down into his lap instead.  
“Why?” Enjolras asks, sounding frustrated, and even – and this is the strangest thing – a little uncertain. As if perhaps he thinks he has done something wrong, that he has disappointed; as if he ever could.  
  
Why stop now? It seems all at once to be a difficult question to answer in some ways, and the easiest thing in the universe in others. He has, in his time, travelled with many different people, all of them brilliant, all of them brave, and he has loved them all fiercely, clung to them like lifelines and yet he has lost them all just the same; and mourned them all deeply. Yet every time he finds another to take their place, and he clings just as hard each time. Why not this time? Perhaps he has finally grown up. Matured enough to know when to let go, when to stop being so selfish.  
  
Perhaps it’s Enjolras. Who is at once everything and nothing that his companions have been before, he is brave and loyal and moral and kind-hearted; but more than that he is terrible and passionate to a fault. He is fire and ice and storm and… everything that he tries to hide inside himself, everything he was before his own downfall; everything he now drowns in drink, in order to forget the damages it has done. Enjolras is all that he used to be, and he becomes more so with every day, with every adventure and every life saved. Enjolras seems to have been made for this life, the same way that he was, and that terrifies him more than anything.  
  
“Doctor!” he is insistent; he is always insistent, “Why are we here?” Because they are here, he realises, glancing around and finally noticing that the rocking of the journey has stopped, and everything is still around them; and the low buzzing of the TARDIS and the harsh breathing of Enjolras in front of him are the only sounds.  
  
“Why?” asks Enjolras again, quieter this time, and with a softness that catches his attention and tricks him into looking up. It’s exactly the mistake he knew it would be. Enjolras is staring straight into him, and the softness has already vanished; his expression is all hard lines and determination and if they weren’t already settled on the solid, safe, ground of twenty first century Paris, he knows he’d ask ‘Why what?’ with a wide smile and plunge them into the next unnecessary danger.  
  
“Why not?” he asks instead, pushing himself upwards and out of the chair, and he would have crashed straight into Enjolras if he hadn’t taken two quick steps backwards at the sudden movement.  
“Because I won’t go,” he says simply, backing against the console and leaning there, and the words don’t sound nearly so childish, or petulant, as they should; and no doubt would coming from most people. From him, it sounds rather more like he’s stating a simple truth than digging his heels in.  
“You were always going to leave eventually,” he says, looking away from him; and that does sound a little petulant, so he tries for cheerful self-deprecation instead, “Can’t ride around in a police box with a mad old man forever,” he continues with a slightly ironic smile.  
  
“Why not?” Enjolras echoes his earlier question, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s been asked why they can’t stay; but he has lived through the pain of enough broken promises of forever by now, and those who didn’t break that promise, the ones who did stay 'forever' well… that was a different kind of pain. One he is not willing to live through again, not now, not with Enjolras.  
  
“Why would you want to stay?” he snaps, rounding on him, “You almost died today.” And Enjolras glares at him then.  
“From what I gather, you find yourself in situations like that quite often,” he replies, and it’s such a nonsense reply to the question he asked that for a moment he has nothing to say to it.  
“If you gather that much,” he says slowly, “Then you have your reason to leave,”  
“Why would I leave? Do you think I’m a coward?” and there’s no answer to give, because any answer other than an emphatic ‘No!’ would be ridiculous, but right now he has no intention of playing into his hands. Coward or not, he intends for him to leave. “I am not!” Enjolras says it for him, “I refuse to turn tail and run at the first sign of danger. I admit, I am not overly eager to die, but now that I know the injustices that are everywhere in this universe, you cannot expect me to walk out of those doors and turn my back on it because it might endanger me,”  
  
“I can,” he says coldly, “I do,” he adds, just so they’re clear.  
“I refuse,”  
“I have ways of making you,”  
“Why are you doing this?” Enjolras asks, and he is red faced in his fury, but his words are careful and controlled as always “I have no objections to the danger; and I am capable of making decisions for myself. So it is you that wishes me to go. If you intend to throw me out so unceremoniously, you should at least give me an explanation as to why.”  
  
“Do you think you are the first person I have travelled with?” he shouts suddenly, “Do you know how many have come before you?” and Enjolras falls silent at that, though he gives a slightly stunted shake of his head in reply. “You cannot know, because I have not told you. I have lived over a thousand years, and I have lived many  lives. Over that time, this ship has known many different travellers, and I myself have known many more even than that. I have travelled with men and women, humans and aliens and robots from times and worlds that even now you couldn’t begin to imagine. Before that I had a family, I had a people. I have had friends and colleagues and companions. They were, all of them, spectacular, and I believed each time – like a fool – that it would last. But you wanted an answer as to why I want you to walk out of those doors to your safe, boring little life, well I answer thusly: Look around you. Where are they now?”  
  
There is silence between them following this outburst, and every small noise seems deafening. Something in Enjolras’ expression shifts, the anger drains from his face and the stiffness in his posture seeps away with it, leaving him slumped slightly over the console. He looks younger now than he ever has before. He murmurs something that doesn’t quite carry.  
“What?”  
“I said… I am not worth the risk,” Enjolras says, louder and more firmly this time, and it sends him reeling.  
“I don’t understand,” he says, and it’s a strange sentence coming from him.  
“These friends of yours. The ones who came before me. You took a risk on them. You always knew there was a chance that something could happen to them, but you had faith in them, you believed in them,” he says, almost seeming sad, “Do you believe in nothing now? Am I not worth that?”  
  
Something old and almost forgotten flares in his gut at those words. The idea that Enjolras is not worth anything to him is preposterous, and he feels an anger at himself for daring to make him think such a thing.  
“You are worth everything!” he replies forcefully, surprising himself – and certainly surprising Enjolras – with the certainty behind the words, and he has crossed the room and taken Enjolras’ hands in his before he can process his own movements. “You are worth losing! Do you understand? I am selfish. A selfish, stupid old man, who fears being alone at the cost of everything. I have let that selfishness, that fear, ruin the lives of those I care about so many times, and I can already see it beginning to work on you!” Enjolras opens his mouth, likely to make some sort of protest, but he is already off, letting go of Enjolras’ hands and stepping away from him so quickly he might have been burnt by the touch.  
“Some days, you almost seem to shine,” he says wheeling around on the spot and throwing his arms outwards, “You radiate energy and passion and when you speak your words are like a fire. You burn like a sun!” Enjolras is staring at him, dumbstruck. “Those are the days I wish I’d never met you. That you had never spotted the TARDIS, that I had chosen another place to leave her, or that I had never returned. Every time you throw yourself into danger in the name of liberty and freedom and justice; you shine a little brighter. Days like today. The days you burn so bright it hurts my heart to witness, because I have seen a thousand stars - a hundred thousand - and I have seen them blaze their brightest right before they fall. Well I will not allow it!” he says with force, slamming a hand onto the railing beside him, “Not you. Not ever! You are going to step out of those doors right now. You are going to forget you ever met me, and you’re going to live a long, wonderful life and die peacefully a ridiculously old age!”  
  
His hand is still up, and pointing towards the TARDIS doors when Enjolras catches hold of it. He keeps it clutched in his, almost tenderly. When he speaks, it is quiet, but no less powerful for it.  
“In the interest of not being selfish,” he says, seemingly calm, but his eyes hold that same storm they did when he threw himself into the fray just hours before, when he was screaming for a halt to the injustices being done; that fight lingers just behind his eyes and beneath his skin. “Perhaps you would consider what I want,” Enjolras continues, and for once he finds himself speechless.  
  
“I have lived an unremarkable life,” he says, still quiet, still calm, “Until now. Until you came and showed me what I was capable of, the changes I was capable of. I cannot go quietly back, not now. If I go back I will only be doing exactly what I have been doing. Fighting, tooth and nail if I must, for equality, for liberty, for freedom for all humankind. I would not be alone, there are many already fighting, and I believe in them, believe they can make a difference, with or without me… but I know that there are countless worlds with no voice to speak out for the oppressed, nobody willing to stand up for the weak, but there is you and there is me, and you might have given up but I have not! We can make a difference, we already have!” and there Enjolras’ voice comes to its crescendo, and the grip on his hand is almost painful, but that same long forgotten feeling is beginning to burn inside him again; he tries to quell it, tries not to allow himself to be carried away on the wings of Enjolras’ unwavering faith.  
  
He is, to an extent, successful. He has long since stopped believing that there can be any real difference made, for every world he saves, he destroys another, for every life, so much death; he has seen it all too many times. There is nothing for it though; not when Enjolras is looking at him like that, full of hope and belief and passion. How could he deny him anything?  
“Well,” he says, carefully extricating his crushed fingers from Enjolras’ grasp, and the boy looks down at his own hand with surprise, and a barely there blush, as though he had forgotten entirely that he had not yet let go.  
“Well,” he says again, running his hand across the TARDIS console, and absently flicking a switch, "Did you have a specific starting point?" he asks and a smile spreads across Enjolras' face as he half bounds forwards to stand beside him.  
"I rather thought we'd just continue as we have been, there's plenty to do," he replies, brimming over with excitement, shining, burning again; and looking at him makes something twist inside him painfully but he waves it away, and concentrates on the warm feeling that that wide angelic smile gives him instead.  
  
He will lose him.  
He knows.  
He loses them all in the end.  
But for now, it is enough to gently press his hand again, and get ready to run.


End file.
